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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
Work has been especially stressful and overwhelming over the past several weeks and honestly Jude became the perfect tragic companion to see me through it. You think life is hard? Meet Jude! I thought I was reading too much romantic and fluffy things lately and this definitely got me right. Tragic and beautiful, and Hardy has such a realistic and moving way of portraying his characters struggles and emotions.
the middle dragged quite a bit but overall i enjoyed it way more than i thought i would.
it's a drama filled book.
the beginning and end are quite interesting but the middle part was a bit too boring to my taste with a lot of back anf forth and not advancing the plot
it's a drama filled book.
the beginning and end are quite interesting but the middle part was a bit too boring to my taste with a lot of back anf forth and not advancing the plot
4.25/5
This book has a reputation for being tragic, too tragic and I can see why. I agree with the common criticism that the very extreme thing that happens in the second half of the book (which I won't spoil) is just taking it too far. However there are also moments of hope and love that are so poignant and emotional and worth all the tragedy.
The relationship between Sue and Jude is exquisite, and when I read some of the interactions they have I felt like it was some of the best writing I have ever experienced. Characters are so real and also Arabella and Richard Phillotson were very interesting. Above all I was so impressed with how this book dealt with marriage and I can see exactly why the Victorians couldn't handle it. I think Hardy only wrote poetry after this, no more novels, much like Kate Chopin after the condemnation of her novella 'The Awakening' around this time in the US. A very different case but now that I think about it, similarly subversive around adultery and marriage.
Another interesting aspect of this book was Jude's ambition to become a scholar at Christminster (a sort of fictionalised Oxford) and how he is actually so much more intellectual and devoted than the people in positions of academic power, but the class system makes it impossible to get into that world.
I can't give this a full 5 stars because it didn't completely consume me, and I think it could have. Maybe if I had read this at the time it came out, or being not as desensitised to its themes as I am now. I read this on audiobook (free, Librivox) which was generally a great experience. Some narrators were better than others but I think it heightened my experience of my novel more than it limited it (there are always pros and cons with audio). Definitely plan to read more Hardy this year, and I think he works well on audiobook, but I would like to have physical copies to annotate so perhaps I could combine the two for my Hardy reading.
This book has a reputation for being tragic, too tragic and I can see why. I agree with the common criticism that the very extreme thing that happens in the second half of the book (which I won't spoil) is just taking it too far. However there are also moments of hope and love that are so poignant and emotional and worth all the tragedy.
The relationship between Sue and Jude is exquisite, and when I read some of the interactions they have I felt like it was some of the best writing I have ever experienced. Characters are so real and also Arabella and Richard Phillotson were very interesting. Above all I was so impressed with how this book dealt with marriage and I can see exactly why the Victorians couldn't handle it. I think Hardy only wrote poetry after this, no more novels, much like Kate Chopin after the condemnation of her novella 'The Awakening' around this time in the US. A very different case but now that I think about it, similarly subversive around adultery and marriage.
Another interesting aspect of this book was Jude's ambition to become a scholar at Christminster (a sort of fictionalised Oxford) and how he is actually so much more intellectual and devoted than the people in positions of academic power, but the class system makes it impossible to get into that world.
I can't give this a full 5 stars because it didn't completely consume me, and I think it could have. Maybe if I had read this at the time it came out, or being not as desensitised to its themes as I am now. I read this on audiobook (free, Librivox) which was generally a great experience. Some narrators were better than others but I think it heightened my experience of my novel more than it limited it (there are always pros and cons with audio). Definitely plan to read more Hardy this year, and I think he works well on audiobook, but I would like to have physical copies to annotate so perhaps I could combine the two for my Hardy reading.
For a raging misogynist, Thomas Hardy sure did manage to accidentally capture the exact trauma of womanhood
An incredibly well-crafted novel that is gripping. Stylistically, it differs from his other novels. The first quarter of the book, when Jude is a boy, is so simple that it almost feels like a book written for young readers. However, once adult issues start to occur in Jude's life, the narrative matures too. In the end, its a morality play with desolate consequences. It isn't an easy book for anyone to read and if you are engaged to be married or about to have or adopt a child, DO NOT even touch the book. But if you can get through it, you'll feel a bit hollowed out and better for the experience.
hardy is always a comfort read for me - i usually try to read him in the summer, when the long days make his long-winded prose and evocations of nature a soothing presence, in spite of the bleak circumstances his protagonists often find themselves in. JUDE is the last of his four best-known novels i’ve read - an ex introduced me to tess, and i loved the mayor of casterbridge and far from the madding crowd - and it’s also set in and around oxford (which he calls christminster), where i’ve lived for the last four years, so i’ve been eagerly awaiting the time to get into it. in some ways it’s quite different from tess and the others in that the natural landscape is less of a presence here: jude, the title character, pays it little attention in his determination to get to christminster and study there, but he’s much more alive to stonework, buildings and churches, all of which hardy describes with his usual vividness. what’s really different about jude, though, is the novel’s being driven by its characters, from jude’s learning and determination to the enigmatic sue bridewell’s heterodoxy and emotional distance.
this novel has a reputation for being depressing, which i didn’t think it really deserved until towards the end, when things really go downhill extremely suddenly. much of what made the book controversial when it was first published, such as its questioning of religious and sexual mores, doesn’t really seem that way any more, but i was nonetheless fascinated by the way in which characters struggle against their times and fates. what really stuck with me as a present day reader, though, was the enduring sense that the forms of marriage and the conventional family don’t work for jude, or for sue, and that they have to work with or through these conventions in order to live their lives. there were moments of real hope (i was struck by phillotson’s convictions regarding his own marriage) and the inevitable tragedies (as well as not-so-inevitable ones)as late victorian society reacted against the measures the characters took to carve out authentic lives for themselves, but even now it’s not clear that things would be a great deal better for them. if i wrote the novel it would be called ‘sue bridewell’ and follow her instead, but the questions hardy raises here still speak vividly to current discussions about the nuclear family and the place of marriage in society. i’m glad i read this - i’ll be thinking about it for a long time yet.
this novel has a reputation for being depressing, which i didn’t think it really deserved until towards the end, when things really go downhill extremely suddenly. much of what made the book controversial when it was first published, such as its questioning of religious and sexual mores, doesn’t really seem that way any more, but i was nonetheless fascinated by the way in which characters struggle against their times and fates. what really stuck with me as a present day reader, though, was the enduring sense that the forms of marriage and the conventional family don’t work for jude, or for sue, and that they have to work with or through these conventions in order to live their lives. there were moments of real hope (i was struck by phillotson’s convictions regarding his own marriage) and the inevitable tragedies (as well as not-so-inevitable ones)as late victorian society reacted against the measures the characters took to carve out authentic lives for themselves, but even now it’s not clear that things would be a great deal better for them. if i wrote the novel it would be called ‘sue bridewell’ and follow her instead, but the questions hardy raises here still speak vividly to current discussions about the nuclear family and the place of marriage in society. i’m glad i read this - i’ll be thinking about it for a long time yet.
22⁰ Livro lido do ano e o último de 2022. Judas, o obscuro de Thomas Hardy. Parece que foi de propósito, mas não o foi. Fechamos o ano de leitura com chave de ouro. Decidi ler este livro porque era mencionado no livro de Terry Eagleton — "Como ler literatura". Devo dizer que gostei muito deste romance. Da história de Judas, Arabella, Sue e Phillotson. Um romance cheio de peripécias e volte-faces. Uma história verdadeiramente trágica.
Good grief. “Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments as ours! Who were we, to think we could act as pioneers!"
Or, as Sue earlier puts it: “I should shock you by letting you know how I give way to my impulses, and how much I feel that I shouldn't have been provided with attractiveness unless it were meant to be exercised! Some women's love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's licence to receive it.”
Or, as Sue earlier puts it: “I should shock you by letting you know how I give way to my impulses, and how much I feel that I shouldn't have been provided with attractiveness unless it were meant to be exercised! Some women's love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's licence to receive it.”
Really fantastic, though I didn't love it quite as much as I loved Tess.